Café Bicyclette, in the Cite Francophone building, has lots of classic French treats on its menu.

Photograph by: Bruce Edwards
, Edmonton Journal

Hours: open for breakfast and lunch weekdays, dinner Thursdays, Friday and Saturdays, plus brunch on weekends

Dinner for two without wine: $50-$75

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EDMONTON - Trying to be all things to all people is a common enough problem in restaurants: the pancake house with lasagna on the menu; the Chinese place serving fish and chips; the steak house and its half-hearted veggie burger.

Café Bicyclette suffers from no such identity crisis. Located in the Cité francophone, the French cultural centre in Edmonton’s legit French quarter (as the road signs along Rue Marie-Anne Gaboury will attest), it is authentically, unpretentiously, a casual French bistro.

Right across the street from the Campus Saint-Jean, the French faculty of the University of Alberta, Café Bicyclette has found a little niche as close to France as it gets here in Canada’s most northerly big city.

Inside, the café is bright and airy, having undergone a renovation since its last incarnation as Bistro La Persaud. White-and-brick walls, a mix of wooden pews and chairs and a wall of glass opening out onto the building’s pretty courtyard take full advantage of Edmonton’s sunny, if not balmy, weather this time of year.

To that end, the café’s adjacent patio is equipped with a few heat lamps, pot-bellied fire pits and cosy blankets to entice patrons outdoors even as temperatures dip.

So far, the café’s raison d’être seems to be its daily breakfast and lunch, with a small menu of well-executed classics like Croque Monsieur, omelettes and croissants for breakfast/brunch and a couple of sandwiches, salads and a daily soup for lunch.

The croissant oeuf et fromage ($6), for example, lets simple, quality ingredients speak for themselves — an excellent, flaky pastry, good cheese and a perfectly fried egg. Likewise, the Croque Monsieur — an egg-dipped sandwich of tasty ham and cheese on fabulous bread, to which a fried egg can be added if you like.

The coffee is locally roasted, from Iconoclast. And while the menu promises local Cally’s Tea, the bag that arrived when we ordered it was not.

Evening hours are limited, with dinner served only on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, at least for now.

The café has only been open since last month, with startup help from restaurateur Brad Lazarenko of Culina, a man who specializes in cool little spots with great food.

Dinner at Café Bicyclette was good on the night we visited, if a bit uneven. Again, the menu is small and classically French. The French onion soup was a standout — rich and redolent with slowly caramelized onions, topped with a chunk of toasted baguette and just the right amount and gooeyness of cheese.

The arugula salad was less successful, with bits of blanched broccoli standing in for the promised green beans, bits of potato that were a little too firm, chopped egg and bacon, tossed with not quite enough vinaigrette to tie it all together.

We passed over the other appetizers fearing they’d be too big to leave us room for entrees. The moules-frites (mussels and fries, $17) or charcuterie and brie ($14) would, however, be a great light meal to share with a glass of wine, perhaps cuddled up on the outdoor patio.

Among the starters was an order of poutine ($10) the size of a dinner plate (we saw it come out of the kitchen, destined for another couple), another good “snack” for sharing.

We were glad we’d saved room for our mains — coq au vin and roast pork, both of which were comforting, country-style meals with hearty gravies, a few roasted carrots and creamy mashed potatoes.

Other entrees included steak frites (steak and fries), bouillabaisse and mushroom tart, all priced at around the $15 mark.

The desserts, a chocolate pot de crème and a lemon dessert topped with Chantilly cream and shortbread, were both fine but unremarkable, especially when compared with the breakfast pastries on offer.

We were one of only a few couples in the place on a Thursday evening; presumably the new café is still finding its dinner audience. Perhaps it was because of the relative emptiness of the place, but without the daytime sunshine and bustle, it did feel a bit stark in there at night.

Add a few more customers — perhaps some supportive neighbourhood folk — get the wine flowing enough to fuel some boisterous, bilingual conversation, iron out a few wrinkles and Café Bicyclette would be a great dinner spot too.

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